“There’s been a big attack on our Christian faith. I think Christians took a big stand this time and said we’re going to stand up for our faith [by electing Trump].” -Evangelical Christian Rose Aller (Evangelicals voted 81% for Trump)

“You’ve now hitched your wagon to the GOP and Mr. Trump in ways that just ruin moral credibility in the country,” said Thabiti Anyabwile, a theologically conservative Baptist pastor in D.C. “I don’t know how you recover from that.”

Meanwhile, take another look at that Bible you carry, and stand against hate crimes:

“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.” (1 John 2:9-11)

]]>http://www.identitytheory.com/what-would-jesus-do/feed/1Why Trump is Attacking the “Failed” New York Timeshttp://www.identitytheory.com/why-trump-attacking-failed-new-york-times/
http://www.identitytheory.com/why-trump-attacking-failed-new-york-times/#respondThu, 17 Nov 2016 13:02:30 +0000http://www.identitytheory.com/?p=12356Why Trump is Attacking the “Failed” New York Times

The new information war is already being fought on Twitter. In his first week as president-elect, Trump focused his diplomatic energy on sending angry tweets to the “failed N.Y. Times.” He’s fired off two dozen tweets since election night. Bizarrely, almost a third were directed at the Times–just for reporting facts about his incompetent transition.

(Three other tweets were revenge-fueled taunts at Republicans who didn’t endorse him–the Bushes, Romney, Kasich–and none thanked the people who worked hard to put him in office.)

Trump’s attack on the Times may seem like another goofy quirk of his sociopathic personality, but the strategy is clear in the scheme of information control.With print approaching zombie status, TV news neutered, and a new Goebbels controlling government information, the Times’ reportingis almost all that remains of mainstream American journalism to keep the new regime’s pathological lying in check.

In 2014, the Times was one of only three daily newspapers with circulation over a million: the others being the Wall Street Journal (owned by Trump-friendly Rupert Murdoch of Fox News) and USA Today (which is basically corporate TV news on paper).

No other newspaper comes close to reaching that many homes. The Jeff-Bezos-of-Amazon-owned Washington Post goes hard on Trump but only has about 25% of the Times’ pull. Still, the Post‘s reach was enough of a threat to cause Trump torevoke the paper’s press credentials and call them “dishonest” and “phony.”

Once the Times falls in line or gets sufficiently discredited, where else do well-meaning Americans turn for information to hold their government accountable? Howard Stern? Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (who was one person Trump actually took the time to thank after the election)?

You might think Anderson Cooper will save you. Listen closely: Anderson Cooper isn’t going to save you. The corporate media conglomerates will play nice with Trump, normalize him, and lionize him. They’ll embarrass themselves and humanity at large with lukewarm “criticisms” of the new regime in between Viagra commercials. For the next four (or God forbid eight) years, they’ll continue to generate Jimmy-Fallon-hair-rubbing PR fluff that pacifies the masses. Not because they’re afraid of Trump’s tweetstorms, but because they are owned by the same business interests whose unlimited influence on politics created America’s soon-to-be-fascist state in the first place.

Eliminate the social security and Medicare you’ve paid into your whole life while signing off on irresponsible tax cuts for the super-rich.

Cheer your billionaire presidential candidate for not paying taxes he owes you–but be sure to pay your own taxes on time!

Mock every scientific organization’s warnings about global warming–while forgiving climate-change-causing pollution by the energy companies who own your representatives.

Give blank checks to the military-industrial complex to fight scary brown people in faraway lands because two people with foreign names shot up a dozen people in California and called it Islam.

Don’t spend public money on reducing the cost of your society’s health care or education. Let the free market determine your prescription costs and tuition fees. The same “free market” that has already caused your health care and education costs to bankrupt you.

Build a huge wall. A wall at the bottom of Texas will solve all your financial and social problems in Flint, Michigan. It’s more important than having clean water to drink. After all, water is not a human right.

Despite the fact that you have no interest in throwing out used condoms in a Motel 6, it’s the hard-working Mexicans that will cost you a job, not the millions of machines that threaten to eliminate nearly half the U.S. workforce. Focus your outrage on immigrants, not the filthy rich people who pay less tax than you.

To quote Bernie Sanders (and simultaneously explain why the corporate media shut Bernie out of contention for the presidency): “There is no justice, and I want you to hear this clearly, when the top 1/10th of 1 percent–not 1 percent–the top 1/10th of 1 percent today in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And in your hearts, you will have to determine the morality of that, and the justice of that.”

I’d never tell you how to spend your money, but it might be a good time to subscribe to the New York Times. Or any news outlet that holds those in power accountable.

1pm: Was just listening to Cat Stevens after yoga and totally see how Islam makes sense. Please add me to the list again. I think I’ll really give it a chance this time. It’s a wild world, and Muhammad is my path through it!

2pm: Wait, but the thing about being Muslim is, all these white people in minivans hate me for no reason. I think I’ll check out this megachurch called Shiny Happy Jesus where everyone high-fives each other while rocking out to hip Christian music.

3pm: On second thought, Christianity looks stupid, lol. It seems cool when they talk about loving your neighbor as you do yourself, etc., but what is with all the Trump voters in that religion? Have they seen the man speak? It’s all “Hahahah I hate cripples and Mexicans and Muslims and women and liberals and facts, I’m so tough and smart!” Do they not realize we’re all subject to disability and that we all have mothers? Taking a break from all this nonsense. Will check back later.

4pm: Bro, I just met a super hot Muslim chick on the train. PUT ME BACK ON THE LIST. [pic attached]

5pm: Dammit, she was only pretending to be Muslim to throw off the registry. I guess I’ll grab a drink and watch TV for a while.

6pm: Dude, Tom Cruise just said something really interesting about prescription drugs being bad or something. Have you heard of Scientology? You should totally consider it, it’s like science, but for your soul. I’m not writing to change my beliefs back to Islam. I just really think you should check out Scientology.

7pm: Ok so here’s the thing. My mom says she won’t let me join the rest of the family for Thanksgiving if I don’t stop trying to convert everyone to Scientology. Guess I’m back on Islam. Parents–am I right?

8pm: I just wanna watch porn. Does Islam allow porn? In case it doesn’t, you might wanna take me off the list.

9pm:As-Salâm Alaikum! I’m dozing off, so I’m gonna read a little Quran and hit the sack. Will report back in the morning with updates. Subhan’Allah, Big Birther! I mean, Big Brother!

Command and Control gives a mostly eyewitness account of an otherwise ordinary workplace accident at a nuclear warhead storage facility that could have led to full-scale devastation in the American South.

It would be easy to approach the topic of Command and Control, the latest from Robert Kenner (Merchants of Doubt, 2014; Food, Inc., 2008), with detached archness. Leveraging the ineptitude of the US military’s bureaucracy against the dire straits accidentally brought on by the 1980 Titan missile silo explosion in Damascus, the film could make for a pitch-black comic tale of real-life American foolhardiness. And in the hands of someone like Michael Moore, the film may have taken this glib tack. But while Kenner does not flinch on parsing through all of the uncomfortable details of a fatal accident that brought the country within a breath of nuclear disaster, he also humanizes the material and curtails any fun that may be had at the expense of America’s untenable military might. The temptation is still there, but Kenner’s tragicomic exposé invites sympathy for his talking heads and saves the ridicule for larger, systemic targets (the Nuclear Arms Race, the politics of military rank, lax labor regulations, etc.). Leaving room for the grief and guilt inherent to this sort of catastrophe, which may otherwise be left to history books, elevates the film above a simple “as it happened” recitation of details. Ultimately, Kenner’s refusal to hide behind historical distance and dull the pain is especially impressive because the film comes dangerously close to embodying the exact kind of administrative coldness that it eventually deflates.

Command and Control gives a mostly eyewitness account of an otherwise ordinary workplace accident at a nuclear warhead storage facility that could have led to full-scale devastation in the American South. Keeping track of the details surrounding how this accident happened, and what was done to ameliorate the situation, is a great concern of the film. So much so that the second-act escalation of focus on the event’s play-by-play gets a bit dizzying. To give a narrative over to a group of people who made a career from exacting, detailed information is to risk some boring storytelling, but Kenner’s patience (and by extension, the patience he asks of his audience) mostly pays off. For one thing, the subjects’ obsession with detail itself becomes a fascination. There’s the usual thrill of being let in on military procedures like access codes that are burned after reading and schematics of top-secret facilities. But then there are idiosyncrasies that feel tailor-made for mockery, like the sanctity with which binders of checklists are regarded. Secondly, the incorporation of de facto narrator Eric Schlosser, the author of the eponymous 2013 non-fiction book that inspired the film, allows for an analytical core and contextual backdrop that would have likely been missing had the film depended solely on eyewitnesses. He also provides the call to action, connecting America’s history of nuclear hawkishness to this potentially apocalyptic scenario and assuring the viewer that one of the only things preventing the Damascus warhead and others like it from detonating accidentally is luck.

The film escapes the weight of wonkishness through the power of pacing, as the lull gives way to a narrative and literal explosion. Members of the surrounding community trickle in as the atmosphere at the doomed facility hits a frenzied pace, providing a wealth of disparate voices (a farmer, a radio DJ/reporter, a US Senator, archival footage of then-governor Bill Clinton) in that quirky way that only a documentary can. At the exact moment that it seems the film has eschewed this communal oral history in favor of the hyper-detailed trudge of the military report, attention shifts back to a multi-angle account of explosive spectacle. And from those ashes, only grief emerges. Several men that worked at the site express their guilt over the loss of their colleague David Livingston. More still recount the injustices of being reprimanded for failing to follow protocol in their emergency rescue efforts. And the specter of paranoia over the safety of our remaining nuclear weapons is left to hang over the film’s conclusion.

Command and Control also gives voice to the complete dissociation required of those that make careers from the business of war. Perhaps it is more accurate to say of the men interviewed for this film that their reality is not ordinary reality. Undercutting this is the uncanny familiarity of workaday concerns (inept bosses, unfair hours, annoying rules) that they share with the average citizen; the difference being that a “slip-up” at work here could set the nation on a course for mass destruction. The verisimilitude of the film’s reenactments reflects this blurring of definitions, opting for cutaways that look like archival footage that doesn’t actually exist. For these, art director William Stewart and prop masters Larry Anderson, Andreas Langley, and Matthew Rebula deserve considerable praise. It’s rare that the reenactment conceit of this sort of documentary can provide thematic weight, but the fidelity of the staged footage in this film serves a larger purpose. After watching those remembering the accident sway from jovial gallows humor to guilt-wracked weeping and expressions of remorse, the gravity of the country’s tenuous relationship with nuclear power sets in, and it becomes easy to question if what we are watching is real. The sobering truth is that it is, and this is a fact that warrants a little sincerity.

]]>http://www.identitytheory.com/bold-look-robert-kenners-command-control/feed/05 Ways You Can Be As Smart As Trumphttp://www.identitytheory.com/5-ways-can-smart-like-trump/
http://www.identitytheory.com/5-ways-can-smart-like-trump/#respondWed, 05 Oct 2016 02:33:44 +0000http://www.identitytheory.com/?p=123005 Ways You Can Be As Smart As Trump

I decided to stop tipping. Why give money to waiters? They'll just squander it. Think about it: that's 20% of every meal cost right back in my pocket. BOOM.

I’m really, really smart. We’re talking off-the-charts brilliant. You might even say I’m as smart as that genius Donald Trump. Since I want you to be happy, I’m sharing some ways I’m so smart. You’re welcome…

1. I decided to stop tipping. Why give money to waiters? They’ll just squander it. Think about it: that’s 20% of every meal cost right back in my pocket. BOOM. GENIUS. BET YOU NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT. IT’S A TOTALLY LEGAL LOOPHOLE TO GET RICH.

2. No more flushing the toilet after myself in public bathrooms. Why risk touching the toilet and exposing myself to germs when the next guy can do it for me? I’ll have the best health of anyone in the world this way. IT’S OK THAT YOU DIDN’T THINK OF THAT ONE–I LIVE NEAR A UNIVERSITY, SO I’M SMART ABOUT GERM SCIENCE.

3. No more turn signals. What’s the point? You don’t need to know where I’m going. You don’t need that space in front of your car. I can make better use of it by putting my car there immediately and leaving you as little space as possible. This will make driving more efficient. Our roads are a disaster. I ALONE CAN FIX TRAFFIC.

4. I’ve never served in the military or worked in government on any level, but I was born in a military hospital, which makes me really smart about war stuff. I have a top-secret plan for ending all terrorism. I’m gonna tell it to the generals, who will appreciate my insight, having wasted their entire adult lives failing and getting captured like losers and getting PTSD like weaklings. I’m sure they won’t laugh in my face. I CAN’T TELL YOU ANY DETAILS, BUT TRUST ME, IT’S GREAT.

5. I learned something about people, it’s really great. First you tell them something scary and awful, really exaggerate, get them pissed off. Talk about how they’re living in hell, they lose at everything, they’re under attack. Then you tell them you’re the only solution to this problem. This gets them high, because they were scared and bummed out, and there you are to make it all better. (This is also works if you want to start a cult or religion.) Then you gotta have a scapegoat. It’s important to focus their anger and fear towards an outside group: Jews, Muslims, cripples, non-Christians, women, whatever, people fall for it all the time. So then you keep talking about how that group is the problem. They’ll go nuts trying to get rid of this group. You won’t believe how easy it is. And they’ll worship you. Oh, and this is important: Project your biggest flaws onto someone you don’t like, so your followers will think you can’t possibly have that flaw. Run casinos into the ground your whole life? Call someone else a huge failure. Ugly and have weight problems? Attack someone for being ugly and fat. Been sued thousands of times? Call everyone else crooked. Failed at a bunch of marriages by cheating on your wives? Attack someone for having an affair. Outsource all your jobs overseas and hire illegal immigrants while underpaying your workers? Talk about how bad outsourcing is and how illegals ruin everything and workers get shafted by the system. No one will suspect you of doing things if you channel all your anger in speaking out against them. IT’S BRILLIANT. AND I TOTALLY CAME UP WITH IT MYSELF.

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein: “The English translation by Ann Goldstein…participates in an exquisite duet across the page with Lahiri’s Italian. Strikingly honest, lyrical, untouched by sentimentality, In Other Words chronicles as philosophical and quotidian a courtship with a language as Ovid’s ‘The Art of Love’ does with amore itself.” -Howard Norman in the Washington Post

Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey: “Ways to Disappear explores the meaning behind a writer’s words — the way they can both hide and reveal deep truths. It begins with a famously unpredictable, cigar-smoking, 60-something Brazilian writer, Beatriz Yagoda, who goes missing — and the devoted young American translator who drops everything in snowy Pittsburgh, including her loyal but crushingly boring longtime boyfriend, to fly down to Rio to join in the search.” -Heller McAlpin at NPR

The Fugitives by Christopher Sorrentino: “The Fugitives is neither an experimental high-wire act nor a plodding whodunit but something in between, an entirely new kind of novel with exceptional interior monologues animated by deception, double-dealing and a doomed affair that lends an air of existential dread to the story.” -Jim Ruland in the Los Angeles Times

Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe by Dawn Tripp: “Georgia is a uniquely American chronicle — told by O’Keeffe — that starts with the importance of a good story and a killer bod. Does that sound uncannily like the techniques used to make careers for women a century later? Yes, and to degree that may shock purists, this is a book about Branding and Marketing, the first two commandments of success in the art world and our world.” -Jesse Kornbluth at Head Butler

(Sorry these birthdays had to be belated. One complication of running an online lit mag from Las Vegas is, the Strip is like, right over there, and I get these free buffets, so I go eat crab legs with Noah Cicero instead of sitting at my computer when I’m “supposed to be blogging.”)

When people ask what I’ve been up to lately, I say, “Not much, just lounging in my new Snuggie and reading Amber Sparks’ The Unfinished World.“

Amber’s book of short stories, which the Washington Post called a “masterful work of speculative fiction,” came out January 25th, 2016.

Daniel Johnson at The Paris Review wrote: “Every scene is, almost always, softly and meticulously arranged, like tableaux of preserved butterflies. And yet, as real as these characters are, everything about The Unfinished World remains somehow fantastic, dreamed up in Sparks’s own terror of an imagination—like the librarian who’s dedicated her life to studying and archiving human fevers.”

And here are some other books that were born as recently as today:

The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith: “There is a primal side in each of us, one that disrespects social norms, has needs, makes demands. In her remarkable novel, The Vegetarian, South Korean writer Han Kang explores the irreconcilable conflict between our two selves: one greedy, primitive; the other accountable to family and society.” –Words Without Borders

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel: “We’re fortunate to have brilliant writers using their fiction to meditate on a paradox we need urgently to consider – the unbridgeable gap and the unbreakable bond between human and animal, our impossible self-alienation from our world…[Martel’s] semi-surreal, semi-absurdist mode is well suited to exploring the paradox. The moral and spiritual implications of his tale have, in the end, a quality of haunting tenderness.” –Ursula K. Le Guin in The Guardian

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie:NPR sums it up best here: “Elizabeth McKenzie’s clever, romantic comedy broadcasts quirkiness right on its cover, with its potentially off-putting title and its illustration of a squirrel instead of the interlocked wedding rings you might expect…The Portable Veblenis a smart charmer about a brainy off-center couple who face up to their differences — and their difficult, eccentric families — only after they become engaged. Although plenty whimsical — the squirrel has opinions! — this is ultimately a morality tale about the values by which we choose to live.”

After encountering a giant Bernie Sanders on Fremont Street in Las Vegas last night, I realized that as a former Vermonter, I’d be remiss not to prop up some books that #feelthebern:

Why Bernie Sanders Mattersby Harry Jaffe (Dec. 2015, Regan Arts.):“Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders may be the least political person in politics—a brusque, unpolished, Jewish Socialist from Brooklyn with deep-seated convictions and distaste for small talk. He is also, at seventy-four, the rising star of the Democratic party.”

Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders (Sep. 2015, Verso): Bernie’s 1997 political autobiography, updated for his presidential bid, previously known as Outsider in the House. In These Times calls it “a clear, compelling and comprehensive vision for reinvigorating democracy, reducing poverty, rebuilding the middle class and restructuring our health care and education systems.”

Bernie by Ted Rall (Jan. 2016, Seven Stories Press):”Bernie joined a tiny independent party from Vermont. He ran for mayor. As a socialist. And won. That was the beginning.” Radical political cartoonist Ted Rall tells the story of Bernie in a graphic novel.

The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America by Jonathan Tasini (Sep. 2015, Chelsea Green): “Tasini draws heavily from Sanders’ ample public record of speeches, statements, and interviews, and couples his working-class spirit with specific legislation he has championed on a number of core proposals that comprise a broader people’s agenda for America.”

A clip: “The rich and large corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and when things get bad, don’t worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just can’t afford to help you, if you are in the working class or middle class of this country.”

]]>http://www.identitytheory.com/bernie-sanders-books/feed/0No One Left To Whine To: On Self-Pityhttp://www.identitytheory.com/no-one-left-to-whine-to-on-self-pity-and-social-media/
http://www.identitytheory.com/no-one-left-to-whine-to-on-self-pity-and-social-media/#respondTue, 15 Dec 2015 00:58:45 +0000http://www.identitytheory.com/?p=12226No One Left To Whine To: On Self-Pity

Writers on self-pity, "the most destructive of non-pharmaceutical narcotics." Also, why so much "competitive victimhood" in social media?

This month I’ve been focusing on eliminating my bouts of self-pity while noticing it more in others (especially white Trump supporters–a tautology, does he have any nonwhite supporters?–and pretty much everyone on Twitter).

Self-pity goes with self-indulgence, so reducing one cuts down on the other.

“The victim now appeals for support from third parties while ’emphasizing one’s own oppression,’ often through social media. So pervasive is this sentiment that it breeds ‘competitive victimhood,’ infecting even those who have relatively little standing to cite their persecution — for instance, white people who bring up reverse racism, or various Fox News broadcasters.”

Self-Pity in Literature

Reading about the absurdity and uselessness of self-pity is a useful antidote to the feeling.

“Now, unless someone stronger and wiser…can josh us out of it, can elevate us and show us how petty and pompous and monumentally useless it is to take ourselves so seriously, then depression can become a habit, which, in tern, can produce a neurological imprint. Are you with me? Gradually, our brain chemistry becomes conditioned to react to negative stimuli in a particular, predictable way. One thing’ll go wrong and it’ll automatically switch on its blender and mix us that black cocktail, the ol’ doomsday daiquiri, and before we know it, we’re soused to the gills from the inside out. Once depression has become electrochemically integrated, it can be extremely difficult to philosophically or psychologically override it; by then it’s playing by physical rules, a whole different ball game. That’s why Switters my dearest, every time you’ve shown signs of feeling sorry for yourself, I’ve played my blues records really loud or read to you from The Horse’s Mouth. And that’s why when you’ve exhibited the slightest tendency toward self-importance, I’ve reminded you that you and me – you and I: excuse me – may be every bit as important as the President or the pope or the biggest prime-time icon in Hollywood, but none of us is much more than a pimple on the ass-end of creation, so let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Preventive medicine, boy. It’s preventive medicine…Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you’re a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace – and maybe even glory.”

“The ego does not want an end to its ‘problems’ because they are part of its identity. If no one will listen to my sad story, I can tell it to myself in my head, over and over, and feel sorry for myself, and so have an identity as someone who is being treated unfairly by life or other people, fate or God. It gives definition to my self-image, makes me into someone, and that is all that matters to the ego.”

“In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian’s terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse – a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred – about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded – and how pitiful that was.”

And John Gardner:

“Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”